A committee of the Board of Health is taking evidence on the venereal disease problem for the purpose of advising the Government on masures necessary for the control of this great evil. The committee will meet in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch, and probably Dunedin, and as this investigation has been promoted mainly by the medical profession, it is expected that representative doctors will assist by giving evidence before the committee. If the Divisions of the Association will earnestly and promptly give heed to the instruction of delegates or deputy delegates, the Council of the Branch should be in a position at the meeting next month in Christchurch to voice the opinion on this question of the large majority of doctors practising in New Zealand. But there is, in addition, an opportunity for every individual doctor in the country to perform a national service by carefully supplying a return when called upon of the number of cases under his care. The committee wishes a full and reasonably accurate tally of all cases of venereal disease under medical treatment in this country, and also an enumeration of the total number of cases of all diseases primarily due to a venereal infection. Now that both the Government and public opinion are aroused, it would be indeed lamentable if this investigation should be hindered or postponed through the partial failure of doctors to supply necessary data for the estimation of the extent of the so-called scarlet plague in New Zealand. Doctors are busy men, but no intrusions upon their time, no distractions or misunderstandings should prevent them from supplying the enumeration desired of them. This point has been perhaps over-laboured, but a previous return under less favourable auspices and conditions was too incomplete to be valuable, and a similar result again would not be creditable to the public spirit of the profession.

A committee of the Board of Health is taking evidence on the venereal disease problem for the purpose of advising the Government on masures necessary for the control of this great evil. The committee will meet in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch, and probably Dunedin, and as this investigation has been promoted mainly by the medical profession, it is expected that representative doctors will assist by giving evidence before the committee. If the Divisions of the Association will earnestly and promptly give heed to the instruction of delegates or deputy delegates, the Council of the Branch should be in a position at the meeting next month in Christchurch to voice the opinion on this question of the large majority of doctors practising in New Zealand. But there is, in addition, an opportunity for every individual doctor in the country to perform a national service by carefully supplying a return when called upon of the number of cases under his care. The committee wishes a full and reasonably accurate tally of all cases of venereal disease under medical treatment in this country, and also an enumeration of the total number of cases of all diseases primarily due to a venereal infection. Now that both the Government and public opinion are aroused, it would be indeed lamentable if this investigation should be hindered or postponed through the partial failure of doctors to supply necessary data for the estimation of the extent of the so-called scarlet plague in New Zealand. Doctors are busy men, but no intrusions upon their time, no distractions or misunderstandings should prevent them from supplying the enumeration desired of them. This point has been perhaps over-laboured, but a previous return under less favourable auspices and conditions was too incomplete to be valuable, and a similar result again would not be creditable to the public spirit of the profession.